Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 27 October 2020; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 7372

User Rating: 4 / 5

raspiBackup can be used to restore a backup to it's original device configuration. There exist 3 configurations:

1) /boot and / on SD card

2) /boot on SD card and / external on a SSD, USB disk or USB flash drive (Raspi2 which doesn't support USB boot mode)

3) /boot and / on SSD, USB disk or USB flash drive (USB boot mode on Raspi3 or Raspi4)

raspiBackup can be used to migrate easily from (1) to (2) or (3).

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 04 February 2022; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 11755

raspiBackup - Supported hardware and software

raspiBackup is supported with RaspbianOS and Uvuntu and Raspberry hardware only. But raspiBackup can also be used successfully on different Raspberry compatible hardware with different Linux distributions. But note raspiBackup requires the /boot and /root partition used in RaspbianOS.

Just test raspiBackup on your environment and be happy if it works. But if it fails or you get error messages there is no support. You may create an issue in github and append the debug log and I will check whether the issue is minor and it's a low hanging fruit. But in any case the environment is unsupported.

Given the fact raspiBackup is maintained and supported for free

1) It's too expensive for me to buy all possible hardware required for tests

2) it's too expensive for me to setup and execute all test combinations

3) it's to expensive for me to execute all tests every time a new release will be published.

Donations may depending on the effort get me to enable unsupported environments.

raspiBackup checks whether it's running on a supported hard- and software and terminates if it's unsupported. Use option --unsupportedEnvironmentto disable this check.

Attention

There exists now a complete new raspiBackup documentation that replaces all raspiBackup documention on this website.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 19 November 2022; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 7994

User Rating: 5 / 5

raspiBackup until now supported RaspbianOS only. Raspberries 4B with 8GB and Raspberries 400 allow to install Ubuntu as operating system and it's heavily used. That's why raspiBackup will support Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server in next release.

I fortunately was able to buy a 8GB Raspi from the donations I got for raspiBackup to add and test the support for Ubuntu.

Release 0.6.9 was published today (11/19/2023) and now raspiBackup supports also Ubuntu 22-04, 23-04 and 23-10

Attention

There exists now a complete new raspiBackup documentation that replaces all raspiBackup documention on this website.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 11 December 2022; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 6160

raspiBackup allows to create a kind of snapshot with option -M. It's a normal backup with two special properties:

Snapshots will not be deleted by the selected backup strategy and will stay there until they are manually deleted.
Snapshots have a description which is the parameter for option -M. This description is appended at the end of the backup directory name.

This allows to create a snapshot besides the usual backup and you can use the description to remember the purpose of the snapshot. That's convenient if you plan a software update or any other major change of your system. If the update fails then you can restore the snapshot easily and start over. If the update was successful delete the snapshot in the backup directory.

There is also a Youtube video available which explains raspiBackup snapshots and includes a demo.

Attention

There exists now a complete new raspiBackup documentation that replaces all raspiBackup documention on this website.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 10 December 2022; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 3488

User Rating: 5 / 5

An agile user of raspiBackup - Franjo-G - wrote a very convenient tool called raspiBackupDialog. In a dialog driven way the most used options for backup and restore are queried. raspiBackup snapshots are supported. In particular the restore is very easy: You get a list of all existing backups and can select which one to use for the restore.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 24 September 2023; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 3879

User Rating: 3 / 5

raspiBackup has a new logo. Friendly forum members from the German Raspberry forum helped me to create one.

Read more: 10 years raspiBackup

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 24 February 2025; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 1943

raspiBackup creates on a regular base backups and keeps a configurable number of backups which can be restored if needed. A lot of folks want to have the latest backup restored already on a second device which can be bootet immediately if the system fails for some reasons to reduce the downtime of the system. raspiBackup doesn't support to create a clone. But it's possible with a small helper tool which executes a restore just after the backup. If rsync as the backup type is used the restore is actually no restore but a synchronization of the changes between the last restored backup and latest backup which is in general very fast.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 12 July 2022; Last Updated: 23 September 2025; Hits: 5881

User Rating: 5 / 5

Visit this page to get a ligh level overview about raspiBackup. Much more details you will find here.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 17 November 2019; Last Updated: 21 September 2025; Hits: 15585

User Rating: 5 / 5

Starting with release 0.6.5 of raspiBackup an itelligent rotation strategy of your backups is supported. It's also called GFS (grandfather-father-son backup). The implementation was inspired by Manuel Dewalds article Automating backups on a Raspberry Pi NAS

raspiBackup retains following backups per default if a daily backup is created:

1) Backup of the current day and the last 6 days

2) Backup of the current week and the last 3 weeks

3) Backup of the current month and the last 11 months

4) Backup of the current year and the last two years

If weekly backups are created there will be no daily backups kept. Different retention values for daily, weekly, monthly and yearly can be defined with an option, e.g. if you want to retain weekly, monthly and yearly backups. Keep in mind the weekly backup day then will become the day of the weekly and monthly backup: If you configure Monday as the weekly backup day your monthly backup will be the first Monday of every month. Yout yearly backup will be the first Monday of the year. Iy you create a weekly backup every Sunday the monthly backup will be the first Sunday of the month and the yearly backup will be the first Sunday of the year.

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 24 February 2018; Last Updated: 21 September 2025; Hits: 19508

User Rating: 5 / 5

There exist three types of messages:

1) Informational - Messagenumber ends with I

2) Warning - Messagenumber ends with W

3) Error - Messagenumber ends with E

Most errormessages of raspiBackup give detailed information about the root cause. Sometimes it's required to get additional information in order to get rid of them. raspiBackup has about 200 errormessages and it's so boring to explain all of them here. If you miss a message first use your search engine and serach for the message number. if you still don't find an answer add the message text in a comment at the end of the page and the message with more detailed explanations will be addded on this page. That way the most common raspiBackup messages will show up on this page.

Messages in the number range from 0-999 are written by raspiBackup. Messages from 1000-1999 are written by sample plugins. All other number ranges are custom plugin messages.

In addition raspiBackup terminates with an error code which oints to the root cause. A list of error codes is available at the end of this page.

If the information for a message does'nt help just use your seach engine to search for the message number (RBK....).

Details: Category: raspiBackup; Also available:; Created: 01 December 2015; Last Updated: 21 September 2025; Hits: 53979

User Rating: 4 / 5

Frequent asked questions about raspiBackup. Every new user of raspiBackup should read all questions and answers.

Invocationsyntax and -options

raspiBackup has to be invoked as user root or with sudo. The invocation syntax is

raspiBackup.sh Option1 Option2 Option3 ... backupdirectory

and starting with Release 0.6.6 you can omit the extension .sh

raspiBackup Option1 Option2 Option3 ... backupdirectory

Subcategories

raspiBackup

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raspiBackup - Migrate the Raspberry OS from SD card to SSD, USB disk or USB flash drive